Fic: To Own Oneself (Shakespeare crossover)

[bookishwench]

To Own Oneself

Written for SmudgeInktopus, Yuletide 2019

Once upon a time, in a kingdom far away, I was renowned for my virtue, as pure and white and feminine as my name. I was a treasure, best loved of my good father’s house, the lovely, unblemished apple of many a suitor’s eye. Then, as all fairy stories end, I married my one true love and lived happily ever after.

Except, of course, there is no such thing as happily ever after. Within hours of my wedding, I displeased my husband in a small matter of obedience. It never occurred to me that once I wed I would have to continue to live up to the impossible feminine virtue of having no will of my own. I assumed that as a wife I should finally be allowed to be myself, to do something other than agree endlessly. In short, I thought I would be as human and free as my husband.

In excuse for myself, I had no knowledge of my own of how a wife must bend to her husband’s will. My own mother died before I could know her. My older sister was as wild as the wind, and I thought her an arch idiot, believing she would never marry and remain the disobedient and unwanted servant of our father until one or both died, but as it turns out, I was the true fool. She married; I married. As to what her husband was like, I shall remain silent except to say he murdered her spirit as a mighty jest, and I no longer knew her. She was a shell, empty except for what her husband saw fit to pour into her. I do not know if she still lives, and even if she does draw breath, she is not who she once was. I think perhaps she would rather have died than become as she was when I last saw her.

For myself, my darling had seemed good and kind until I refused him a simple request to come when called. It was my turn to be broken, and added to the faint whip marks on my back from my sister’s petty cruelties were other blemishes. My father turned a blind eye. It was my fault, of course, as everyone said, so why should he intervene? Soon, his eyes were blind for good, and he was buried in the family sepulcher. As it became plain, my husband had reckoned on my father possibly one day choosing to stop his money should he harm me too much, and now that he had all, my life was hell.

I left.

I had no children, another fault for which I was punished, so I had the luxury of thinking of myself alone. A few coins paid my way to a boat, then to a cart, a ship. At every turn I thought I would be stopped, but I escaped. Whether my husband ever looked for me, I do not know. I find I don’t care. When I stepped off the deck of that ship and into the sunlight, leaving behind the rats and stench of the hold where a sailor had agreed to hide me and bring the occasionally scraps of food, I stood in paradise. Cyprus was beautiful beyond what I had imagined, and I took steps in freedom.

Unfortunately, though heaven may not require payment for lodging and food, Cyprus did, and I had nothing left. I sought sanctuary in the church, claiming to be a widow, and the priest allowed me to sleep within the relative safety of its stone walls. Still, I needed a plan. I could work well with needle and thread, and in gratitude for shelter I offered my skills to create a particularly stunning altar cloth, embroidered in beautiful colors, the figures looking nearly as though they were alive. The people saw it, and soon the ladies of Cyprus wanted me to work my designs for them. Rich needlework on sleeves and skirts, light as the breeze from the sea and charming to behold, brought money enough, and though for a time I ate so poorly the scraps from my time on ship were a lovely memory, I slowly saved. In a year, I bought a small shop, slept on the floor at night, ate my own food, drank my own wine, and lived without overmuch fear. I knew myself to be happy, and I thanked fortune that I had found security and contentment.

There was envy from some, though, and envy can be a very powerful thing. Some gossips began to spread tales about me, and I caught the barest of whispers on the wind. They implied that my work was something besides needle and thread, that I earned my money in other ways, that I was part of the oldest profession. Granted, no men’s names were mentioned in connection with me, but that didn’t seem to matter. The idea that a woman could have her own bit of comfort without the help of a man seemed impossible to them, but I kept my peace. To call attention to their lies and suppositions, even to deny, would only make the idea stronger. I did not want to make a spectacle of myself. Cyprus was not all that far from Padua, for I had travelled from one to the other, and I did not want news of me to make its way to my home. I had kept my name, though changed his part of it, of course; a good many women are named Bianca, and I thought that the less I lied, the greater would be the chance that all would be well. For a time, it was.

Storm clouds gathered, both real and metaphoric, and the island prepared for invasion from the Turks. I found myself not especially afraid of battle, but something else made my blood run cold. I could not put a name to it then; I still cannot say for certain that it was genuine foreboding or mere fancy, but nonetheless evil did come to the island. It was not, however, brought with the Turkish fleet, who were repelled without ever setting foot on shore. No, two lovely sailing ships from Venice carried it within their hulls. One was my downfall. The other may have been the offspring of the devil himself.

I suppose I was a fool, but what woman has not been? My first sight of Cassio was a temptation too exquisite for any but the coldest maiden to quench, and I was neither cold nor maiden. He had a handsome face, one that reminded me of the good parts of home, and a smile that lit up his eyes and made them sparkle. He was like joy made flesh, and although some part of me knew any man so fair would undoubtedly have had more than his share of conquests and then double the number again, my heart beat faster, and when his gaze fell on me, he claimed yet another victory.

I did not want marriage. For one, I was still married, and still am, so far as I know, unless my husband has died. They say Cassio has a wife at home, so this was double adultery, and all the worse no doubt for that. The heavens have judged me for my sins, and there was much guilt, but there was also the knowledge that for a moment or two I was not alone. I felt whole when he was there. It is passing strange that I never felt dissatisfied before he appeared, but once he did, satisfaction was never mine unless he was with me.

In time he began to tire of me. I could feel it. I had been a pretty piece of flesh, and one too that could cook and talk intelligently and even sew his clothes for him, never asking for money for I had my own, so I was at least a pleasing diversion, but I felt I was one of many. Cyprus is not so large a place that tongues don’t wag from one side of it to the other, and the fortress where the soldiers garrisoned was yet smaller. There was talk of him and others, even the general’s wife, though that I never believed. Once, for no cause, he stayed away a solid week, then returned as though no explanation were needed. In truth, that chance meeting was orchestrated by myself, and had I not done so, I believe he might never have come to my door again. I feared losing him, and I was jealous.

But he had use for me again, giving me a handkerchief he said he found in his chamber and asking me to copy it. I protested a bit, wondering if it came from another lover, but I was too eager to please. Old habits are hard to break, and obedience had reared its head.

It was an odd design. Strawberries. While I like the fruit well enough, to cover a handkerchief in them made it look as though it had been spattered in blood, an ill omen that proved too true. The dye was strange, a color I could not match perfectly, and the pattern of vines and leaves wove in and out of itself like snakes or iron bars.

The longer I looked at it, the less I liked it. It unnerved me in some way of which I could not speak, and my mind misgave that some trouble was coming. I wondered at Cassio’s story, realizing it made no sense. The handkerchief was no cheap stuff to find lying about in his room. Someone would have come looking for it, no doubt, and yet here he was with no idea how it had come to be there. It grew in my mind that he knew. He knew and was mocking me. He was laughing at stupid little Bianca, besotted by the great Cassio, as she did needlework for him to copy his newest darling’s lurid handkerchief. Why would he even want a copy of it? As proof she had gifted it to him? Did he intend to press an advantage with her later? Was he so cruel as not only to use us both but to extract gold from this other one to stop his mouth or perhaps her own? I did not wish to believe so, and yet, from what I had seen of men, it was likely.

I did not do as he asked. The piece of linen I had begun to pattern I tossed into the fire, and knowing what I do now, I wish I had thrown the original in as well. Instead, I threw it at him, and doing so apparently sealed that poor child’s fate. It was the general’s wife’s, and had I known it, I too would have thought her guilty of being untrue to her husband. It was a lie, of course. The whole city was dripping in lies by then, most of them pouring from Iago’s mouth, and soon I would be twisted up in one of them as well.

Cassio came to dinner. He ate my food, had several cups of good wine, laughed and talked and bragged and kissed. For a moment, I believed him to be mine, and when he bedded me, I allowed myself the fantasy that he would return again, though in the coldness of the empty, dark room when he left, reason returned. This had probably been his farewell. Strangely, I did not weep. I felt oddly lighter. Goodbye is not always a cause for tears, and this had been enough.

I went out walking, wanting to see the stars, feel fresh air, ponder what this might mean. I could breathe in the salt scent of the sea, and I let my thoughts run this way and that. Of course, it is never safe for a woman to venture outside the walls of her home at night, but this once I needed freedom as I needed air.

Cries of pain suddenly echoed through the streets, bouncing from the walls like living things, and in the timbre of that voice I recognized the sound of Cassio. Telling myself it was only my fancy, I ran toward the noise, believing others would come too, and they did. When I saw him lying in the street, his blood pouring over the stones like ink, my heart dropped. I did not hate him. I realized now I did not love him, but I certainly did not want him to die. Horrified, I forgot that a murderer might be lurking close by, and he was, closer than I knew, at my shoulder, spinning webs of lies.

Iago was never questioned. I do not know why this was since so many of the things he told others made no sense at all when examined. When he said I had been part of a band of ruffians who attacked Cassio, others nodded as though they had always expected as much. When he claimed I was a strumpet, no defense I gave would persuade them otherwise though harlot I was none. Rough hands seized me, and I was thrown into prison, abused and taunted, treated as a thing.

Before long, I was no longer alone. A mere hour passed, perhaps two, before Iago arrived. The guards who escorted him looked sick as they tossed him into another cell, and they regarded him with a mixture of loathing and terror. But they did not free me. I was forgotten in the aftermath of the tragedy that had unfolded.

Days passed. Cassio now was governor of Cyprus after the Moor’s suicide, and still I remained where I was, as did Iago. He was horrifying company, and I was gradually convinced that the Moor was not far wrong when he had thought him a devil. For hour upon hour, Iago ranted and raved, laughing to himself, congratulating himself abundantly on the deaths of three innocents, enough that I wondered that someone didn’t come to execute him. He made my blood run cold and was worse torment than the rats. He uttered things, horrible secrets, names, spells, bargains he had made on which he expected to collect. My only comfort was that he must be mad, that the things he spoke of could not be real.

Then one morning I woke, and he was gone. No one knows where. He simply disappeared. Maybe he was welcomed home to hell.

Later on that day, Cassio himself came to the cell with a key, but before he opened the door, he pressed me to tell him how Iago had escaped, and I told him truly that I did not know. He considered this for a long moment, then nodded.

“He is gone,” he said, opening the lock. “That must be enough for all.”

I doubted very much he was truly gone, but I did not argue. I was too bent on getting out of prison.

“Things cannot be as they were,” he said uncomfortably.

“I know this,” I said. “You rule now. You will need to live differently.”

“Aye, but that is not enough,” Cassio said. “The lies Iago told live in his absence, and the people believe them still. Two nights ago, your shop was burned. I fear that if you stay, you might be as well. The people are come undone in their brains and want vengeance for the general and his wife, but as there is no one left to blame—“

“The blame falls upon me,” I said wearily. “Is that the way of it?”

“Though unjust, it is,” he said. “I have arranged passage for you on a ship heading to the west and a small amount of gold.”

“I have my own,” I said. “Iago lied. I am no harlot, so I need not take money from you.”

“That money that was yours is gone as well,” Cassio said, “seized by the mob.”

I took a moment to think of this. Truly, once more, I was left with nothing.

“And you, good governor, cannot make them return what they have taken?” I asked, anger making my voice shake. “Is your power mere pretense?”

He gave me a sharp look, and I was instantly reminded he indeed had all the power. I was now friendless, penniless, my reputation ruined, and with nowhere left to go. If he withdrew his offer, I would having nothing at all.

“When does the ship leave?” I asked, lowering my eyes.

“In an hour,” he said, handing me a leather bag that jingled quietly. “It is better this way.”

“Where will I go?”

“The ship is bound for Algiers, but from there you may go wherever you please,” he said, turning to leave, but he added quietly, “Good luck to you, Bianca, though perhaps that name would be better to remain here. Become some other woman, and may fortune favor her more than it did you.”

The sailors took me from Cyprus, but they did not love their task. They too believed me in league with Iago or robbers and thieves. I wondered at the strength of his lies that they should have a power that seemed more than mortal. While the governor had said to take me to Algiers, after a few weeks at sea they would have killed me and taken the gold, but fate intervened. As it was, they took the coins anyway, but I was found to be pregnant, and the killing of a pregnant woman was too great a trespass to dare, especially with the dangers of the seas about them. They would not risk that sin. Instead, they set me upon a desert isle, claiming hypocritically that their hands were clean of my inevitable death. I still remember pleading, screaming with rage as the sails filled with wind and took them away, leaving me alone.

My thoughts straightened, and I determined that I should live. The island was not so harsh as it might have been. I found myself shelter, water, food, and in time I gave birth to a son, and I named him Caliban, partly for his father, partly for hope of liberty, and partly to remind myself that save for my son, I had forever banned all men from my heart.

Eventually, I became aware other things lived on the island, things not quite human. I remembered Iago’s mad ravings and tried repeating them. Happily, I found I had a natural talent for sorcery, or perhaps it was my bitterness that spurred my darker powers to their new depths, and soon I could bend spirits to my will. No longer obedient, I became the one to be obeyed. Those who blunder onto my island call me a witch, and perhaps I am. But I am powerful. I will never be defenseless again.

.
Note: Yes, there are three plays woven together in here, but I've always felt bad for Bianca getting trapped in the mess Iago created, along with the fact everyone, including teachers and critics, seems to accept his assessment of her when there really isn't any other backing for it. I've also always been suspicious of Prospero's judgment of Sycorax as evil, particularly since he really does seem to have stolen the island.